Rally Engineering has successful first year in Sarnia

A year after setting up shop in Sarnia, Rally Engineering is looking to double the size of its local workforce in 2018.

The Sarnia office of the Edmonton-based engineering firm opened downtown in late 2016 with Sarnia natives Paul Croft and Mike Thompson as managers and the only two local staff members.

In September, the growing office moved to a new location in a plaza at 1337 London Rd.

“We’re currently at a team of 25,” said Thompson.

“There was definitely good growth in the first year.”

Rally is planning an open house on Feb. 15, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the office for engineers, construction managers and planners.

“The goal for the next 12 months is definitely to try and double the team,” Croft said.

The firm opened its doors in Sarnia as a wave of new industrial projects and construction announcements was landing on the community.

Along with several smaller bio-chemical projects planned for the community, Nova Chemicals announced in late 2017 it will spend $2 billion on a new polyethylene plant and an expansion of its Corunna manufacturing site.

As well as new permanent jobs, the projects create construction jobs and spinoff work for the community’s industrial service companies and engineering firms.

“Our core business we want to go after is the existing customer base, the existing facilities” planning ongoing maintenance work, Croft said.

“That’s our bread and butter.”

Croft said they work with customers to maximize the number of projects they can complete in a year, get the most out of their maintenance budgets.

Croft said the young Sarnia office has been working with Rally’s Fredericton office to share and “balance” resources with the workload.

“We have been busy,” he said. “We’ve got established relationships with customers now where we’re seeing a consistent workload.”

But, there are always peaks in workload and resources from Rally’s Fredericton office allows the Sarnia site avoid bringing on staff for only a short time and then letting them go when the work ends.

Thompson said that cycle of “fire and hire” can be common in their industry, but they decided early on they wanted to operate differently.

“We want to do what’s right for our employees, and our customers, as well, and make sure there is a consistent team,” Thompson said.

“You don’t want to change the people that your customers are seeing, project to project,” Croft said.

Building long-term relationships with customers in the community will “play into our long-term success here,” Thompson said.

“We were definitely pleased with how the first year went,” he said.

Croft said the decision to move the Sarnia officer from downtown was a hard one to make at first, but there were issues with finding enough parking spaces for the growing workforce.

Renovations freshened up the space they moved into in the fall, plus that section of London Road is experiencing new development, Thompson said.

“It will be quite the buzz around here with Refined Fool going across the street here.”

Croft said they’ve found the new location is convenient for customers, as well as employees with banks, stores and other services nearby.